


Ghosts Of The Past

by artisticPsychologist



Category: StarCraft
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Hallucinations, Implications of Sexual Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Other, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:23:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisticPsychologist/pseuds/artisticPsychologist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghost Agent X75301N has always lived by a strict, military routine handed down to her by her superior officers.  One day, however, she wakes up to find herself on an unfamiliar ship with no orders to speak of.  What’s worse, memories of her past that should have been removed are beginning to return to her.  Soon, she finds herself torn between a struggle for freedom and the comfort of the only life she's ever known.</p><p>Ghosts Of The Past is set in the StarCraft universe, spanning the Terran and Zerg campaigns from StarCraft II.  It involves both canonical and original characters.  The story is designed to be accessible for both long-time fans of the series as well as newcomers.  While it’s not intended to be an introduction to the world of StarCraft, I’ve done my best to explain foreign concepts for new readers without making those explanations too lengthy for long-time fans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rude Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> Hoo boy! I'm so excited to finally get this story online. I was very nervous about posting this story at first, but a few friends convinced me to share it. I hope you all enjoy it!

 

            The Ghost Academy was a magnificent facility, designed for the training of powerful psychic soldiers called ghost agents.  It glittered above the landscape of Tarsonis, the central planet under the rule of the Confederacy of Man.  Recently, the Academy became part of a training program to ready their troops against a new and powerful threat.  A man dressed in a black, formal military uniform stood ready to address the trainees of a special ops program.

            “These creatures are the deadliest alien threat we have ever faced. They are insatiable, single-minded, they do not know fear, and they cannot be reasoned with. These aliens are the perfect killing machines, and that’s why you alone are being trained to take them on. They’re just like you.”

            An alien, no larger than a Labrador, paced back and forth restlessly in a neosteel cage.  It looked back and forth between each of the trainees, and its mind searched for something it was no longer able to grasp.  The scientists had prepared it for study by removing a part of its brain. It no longer served alongside its brethren.  Still, it sought them out.  Its eyes locked with one of the ghost agents, and she felt a surge of alien thoughts wash over her. Its brain was different from hers on a fundamental level, but one errant thought among the cacophony was recognizable.  A thick, dark tongue slid out from between the creature’s mandibles and swept across a sharpened row of fangs.

            It was hungry.

~

            Skies shone red and dusty above Mar Sara.  Confederate forces marched in neat rows, advancing upon an alien threat.  Monstrous beasts swarmed over the landscape ahead of them like thousands of hulking cockroaches. Winged insects descended from the skies, darkening the already cloudy day.  A ghost agent raised her rifle, and fired at one of the aerial, shrimp-like beasts.  It crumpled, wings going slack as its body dropped to the ground.

            Mar Sara had once been a small colonial planet at the furthest reaches of the Confederacy’s domain.  Now, it was nothing more than a hellish battleground.  The once-fertile earth beneath the ghost’s feet was cracked and dry, and red dust swirled around the Confederate soldiers as they charged blindly into the oncoming threat.  The ghost fired the last of her rifle’s magazine into the alien swarm, saving one last bullet to pick one of the smaller creatures off the body of a marine. It had pulled off the soldier’s armor in thick chunks and was now feasting upon the man inside. As her bullet pierced the alien’s thick exoskeleton it flew backwards, and she saw a wet flash of blood coating its face.

            The ghost slung her rifle over her shoulder and rushed over to the body, yanking a semi-automatic from the suit’s metal fingers.  She turned once more to face the enemy, sensing one of the aliens coming close.   A massive beast with a snakelike body and bony scythes for arms was advancing on her, chasing the smell of human blood and alien ichor that clung to her suit.  It snarled, rearing back to strike. The ghost fired blindly, emptying the last of her ammo into its grizzly head before it fell backwards. Within seconds of this small victory, one of the dog-sized aliens was on her, tearing at her armor and sinking its teeth into her neck.

~

            Cold hands dressed her wounds.  The ghost swam upwards, fighting against some unseen current before she began to hear a voice calling out.  No… not call out.  The noise was human, and was somehow lyrical.  A song must’ve been stuck in someone’s head.  The ghost followed the noise, dazed as she drew herself upwards into a blinding white light.

            The music stopped short.

_She’s waking up._

            “Hello?  Agent… erm… X75301N?”

            Her vision slowly began to focus, and she met the gaze of a female medic.

            The ghost’s eyes shot open, and she gave a sharp gasp.  At once the white medical bay ceiling was swiftly replaced with the dark grey of a small bunk on a battlecruiser. This she recognized, and relaxed slightly in the knowledge that she was in the belly of a military ship. The rest had just been a bad dream.

            X75301N’s mind worked quicker now that it was released from worry, and she searched her memories for information about what led her to this room, and what ship she was on. Unfortunately, she came up dry. This, too, was routine for her. Memory removal was standard practice for all ghost agents.

            First on the agenda was to get up and take stock of everything around her. Her head was pounding and she felt sick as she stood, but she couldn’t have been in very bad shape. If she was on a battlecruiser, then that meant she was preparing for a mission.  The Confederacy would have left her in good shape, with information regarding her next—

            _No,_ she thought, reprimanding herself silently.  _I serve the Terran Dominion.  My orders come from Emperor Mengsk.  I should know that._

Agent X75301N hadn’t served under the Confederacy for years. Not since the Old Families had been taken out of power in late 2500 and replaced with Emperor Mengsk. She and many others had been grateful for it, too, so it wasn’t like she’d ever been nostalgic for the old days. Emperor Mengsk had destroyed a corrupt system—a system that had tried to corrupt her as well—and remade it in his glorious image.  All of the ghost agents had been tested, and those willing to serve under Mengsk’s Dominion were rebranded, resocialized, and folded back into the military. The Dominion treated its ghosts well. X75301N’s last mission under Mengsk had been on the capital planet of Tarsonis, guarding vital train cargo. She had sat in bliss as the train chugged its way along the landscape.  The planet was a beautiful shade of orange, its surface cracked with drought.  The sun rose up against a dusty mountain range as they moved towards Tarsonis City. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she looked up as a marine asked her what was wrong.  X75301N had never been able to explain why, but something was achingly familiar about that cracked earth, that dusty sunrise, and those mountains in the far distance that lazily slid past her line of sight. She could have reached out and touched them.

            The ghost was yanked back into reality all of a sudden, and she found her hand was outstretched now, as if she had been pointing towards the horizon.  She pulled it back and held her wrist tight against her chest.

            A ghost’s memories of their previous missions were supposed to be scrubbed clean during debriefing.  Why did she remember that moment on the train?  She sat down on her cot, head still throbbing dully. She reached up to rub her temples and make the pain go away, and her hand found a wet bandage on the right side of her skull.

            Before she could investigate it further, the door swung open and she heard a familiar voice.

            “Agent, good to see you’re awake,” it spoke.  Her head gave another throb, painful enough to blur her vision for a moment.  A man in a red uniform stood before her in the doorway.  There were three gold bars and a star emblazoned on his sleeves and shoulders, and a silver leaf had been pinned neatly at his collar. This man was a Commander, which meant he was her superior officer on the battlecruiser.  The ghost should have stood at attention and saluted him, but instead she sat there trembling in horror at the sight of his face.

            “C-Commander Gellard, sir,” she said, voice shaking.

            He cocked his head to the side, and looked confused for a moment before grinning down at her.

            The phantom of his voice found her, in the deepest recesses of her mind.

            _“You love it.  They’ll pan you in a few minutes, anyway, so just relax.”_

A loud, guttural scream erupted from her, and the ghost launched herself forward at Gellard before she even knew what she was doing.  Her body slammed into his wide chest, and he stumbled. He was too big to knock off of his feet, though, and he managed to get his hands around her wrists and push her up against the wall.

            “Calm down, girl!” he yelled, but his voice was no longer his own. It was deeper, richer, and possessed a thick accent she recognized but couldn’t place.  “I don’t know who this Gellard be, but he ain’t me. I ain’t no Commander.”

            The flesh beneath her bandage gave another painful throb, hard enough for her vision to blur into one big, undefined shape.  When she blinked enough times to regain it, a different man stood before her.  His skin was as dark as the night, and dreadlocks framed his bearded face like thick ropes. Most striking were his eyes, though.  His pupils and irises were a milky white, as though he were blind.  She could see them twitching as he scanned her face, though, so she knew he wasn’t.

            X75301N struggled against his hands, but they were large and thick. His gloves were rough and warm as his grip tightened around her wrists.  It was like being held in place by a pair of bricks that had been laid out in the sun.

            Instinct told her to search his mind, to figure out what he wanted with her. Strangely, though, he was a complete blank.  How was he suppressing his surface thoughts and keeping her from reading him easily? She would have to pry deeper if she wanted to get anything out of him.  With a push she tried to slide into the cracks in his mind, but there seemed to be no way in.  There was no psi screen device in either of his ears, and for a moment she feared that he wasn’t really there.

            _You won’t be getting anything from me unless I give it to you,_ he thought, and she pressed herself tighter against the wall.  Every nerve in her body was convinced he was telling the truth.

            With nothing else to do and no way to guard her own thoughts, she tried to push down her anxiety by examining him.  The stranger wore what looked like a ghost’s armor.  Artificial muscle fiber lay tight against his skin like spandex, adorned with light metal plating to protect his chest, arms, and legs.  His suit was black, though, accented with brass.  A red skull-like image rested over his left shoulder, and she noticed thin, red electric lines running down along the seams of his suit.  Ghosts were generally outfitted with hostile environment suits that were white and silver, with blue highlights.  The blue color wasn’t a palette choice, though. It was the easiest light spectrum to work with for the cloaking feature their suits came equipped with. She’d never before seen a ghost that dressed like this man, and she certainly didn’t recognize the skull insignia on his shoulder.  Maybe he was part of some special ops team?

            “Yeah, you could say we’re special,” he said, with a deep chuckle. “And you’ve been chosen, sister. You gonna be one of us now.”

            Her brow furrowed.  He was reading her mind, and she could feel him probing around inside her.

            “Are those my orders?  Joining this special squadron?” she asked.

            “Not orders,” he said, shaking his head.  “No more of that.  Not for the likes of us.”

            The grip on her wrists released, and it was then that she realized she’d been shaking from head to toe.  He took a step back, and she saw he was far taller than he first appeared. The intimidation didn’t end there; he radiated the kind of power that most ghosts only dreamt of. She nearly fell to the floor from the sheer weight of it.  Once again she tried to read him for a bit of clarity, and she found that she still couldn’t slip inside to probe him.  That wasn’t a problem she usually dealt with.  His eyes narrowed, and she knew he felt her trying to push inside.

            “Tell me why I’m here,” she said, voice cracking around the last word and ruining what little intimidation she possessed.

            “We found you guarding a train on Tarsonis.  We grabbed lots of ghosts down there, brought you all up on the ship to fix you up.  We took out your implant,” he said, gesturing to her temple.  “You’re not Mengsk’s tool any more. He can’t find you or use you now, can’t take away the stuff that makes you human.  We also gave you something to repair the damage their mind wipes done to you.  You gonna start remembering. When you do, then you got your own choice to make.  It’s gonna take time, and a lot o’ healing, but you gonna remember everything they done to you.”

            “What do you mean?” she nearly yelled, sick of not knowing what he intended for her. “What who did to me?”

            “The Confederacy, and the Dominion after that.  When it all comes back to you, you gonna be more powerful. You been hearing voices already, sister.  The ghosts of the past have started coming home to roost.”

            This was so far from familiar that it was starting to make her dizzy. If her neural implant had really been removed, then there was no way for her superiors to track her down. No rescue would be coming for her. This was clearly a room on a battlecruiser, though, so she must’ve been part of some kind of military operation. X75301N had never been in the dark like this on a mission before.  She’d always either received clear orders, or had been able to read the minds of any superior who tried to hide things from her.  The stranger’s guarded mind was frustrating, and she felt hopelessly afraid of him.

            He seemed to soften all of a sudden, and pushed gently against her mind.  A wash of calm struck her, and even though she knew she was being manipulated, it was still a welcome reprieve from the tension.

            _I’m not here to hurt you. You don’t have to be afraid,_ he thought.  _We’re brother and sister now.  You and me, we both used to be ghosts.  But I see the truth now, and I be sharing it with you. Just let the memories come back, and you’ll understand.  You got a name I can call you by?_

 _Agent X75301N,_ she mentally replied, relieved that she could finally hear what he was thinking again.

            He laughed aloud, and she felt him probing her mind a little deeper.   _That’s a mouthful.  They really did a number on you, didn’t they?  They even took your name.  I can’t find it anywhere in here, but don’t worry.  It’ll come back soon.  For now, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Agent. It’ll be easier on me. As for you, sister, you be calling me Tosh._

“Tosh,” she said aloud, committing the name to memory.  Her head throbbed again, and her knees felt like they would give way beneath her at any second.

            “You should get a lie down, Agent.  It’s gonna be a long night, and I got a lot more people to check on,” he said softly, before stepping out of the room and leaving her alone again.

            X75301N—or maybe she should start referring to herself as Agent, if Tosh was going to be calling her that—practically collapsed onto her cot.  Tosh was right, she needed time to process all of this. There was no doubt he was at least telling her part of the truth.  Things she should never have been able to remember were leaking back into her consciousness.  She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she last heard the name Gellard, but it felt like years.  He’d done something to her, but she couldn’t remember much about it.  She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to remember.

            To distract herself, she glanced over at the door.  Part of her wanted to check to see if it was unlocked, but the rest of her was too exhausted to stand again.  Her eyes fluttered shut, and she fell fast into slumber.


	2. A Satellite Of Saturn

            Two people stood in a darkened, small living room.  An armchair sat charred and black in one corner, and a woman emptied a dustpan filled with broken glass into a trashcan nearby. A young girl was standing near the broken chair with her hands behind her back.

            “You can’t ever do that again, do you understand me?  Don’t ever let anyone see you doing that,” the woman said.  She was close to her mid-forties, dark brown hair already starting to turn gray with age. “You even broke your daddy’s favorite chair.”

            The young girl turned away and stared at the carpet.  She knelt down, her small hands picking at the shag. Little bits of fluff caught between her fingers as she fought not to look her mother in the eye. _Daddy’s not coming home anyway,_ the girl thought.  _We don’t even sit in it anymore.  You should be more worried about all the light bulbs that broke.  We were actually using those._

“Honey, you need to promise me that you’ll never do that again. Try really, really hard for Mommy, okay?” the woman asked, coming closer.  She knelt down to get on her daughter’s level.

            “Okay,” the girl said, nodding slowly.  Her eyes locked with her mother’s, just to get the point across. “I’ll try really, really hard.”

The living room shifted, and its walls and the women in it faded to white.

~

            After several days in the medical wing, the white ceiling above X75301N’s head had become one of her only constants.  She didn’t even have the reassurance of pain in her shoulder any more. They’d pumped her so full of morphine that there was nothing left to feel.

            “Hey, how are you holding up?” asked the only other constant. A female medic who had been introduced to the ghost as Nurse Caroline Sheppard walked into the room and grinned warmly. She had a small frame, olive skin, and a round face that was accentuated nicely by a pair of square spectacles perched on her nose.  Perhaps most intriguing was her hair, which had been dyed a rosy pink.  It always seemed to draw the eye away from the drab white and gray of the rest of the room.  The ghost gave a weak wave to Caroline before going back to staring at the ceiling.

            “When can I go back out in the field?” the ghost asked, opening their conversation as she usually did.

            “Sorry, you’re still recovering and we’re not sure how long it will take. Once that bite heals you’ll be right back out there, but you took more damage than we originally thought. It’ll be a long process,” Caroline replied before picking up a small clipboard from the foot of the ghost’s bed.

            Their eyes met for a brief moment—X75301N had never been particularly comfortable with sustained eye contact—before Caroline looked away. The medic was easy to read, perhaps a bit too easy.

            “Why do you keep thinking that?” the ghost asked, not afraid to say what was on her mind or anyone else’s.  “You shouldn’t be happy that I’m healing so slowly.  I need to be back in top form so I can report to my superiors.”

            Caroline looked uncomfortable, as most people did when they realized there was a telepath in the room.

            “I don’t mean it like that.  The more time you take to heal, the better it’ll be for you in the long run. You might not even end up with a scar, if you’re lucky,” Caroline explained.

            “You’re lying,” X75301N said firmly, refusing to look away from the medic. Caroline heaved a sigh, and rubbed at her temple.

            “I want you to get better, don’t ever question that.  But can you blame a girl for wanting to have someone to talk to who isn’t on the brink of death?” she asked.

            “I’m not much of a talker,” the ghost said simply.

            “I think you’re perfectly lovely,” Caroline replied, smiling. Something pleasant rose to the surface of the medic’s thoughts before it was pushed down again. X75301N barely got a look at it. “Rest up, okay? You’ll feel better soon.”

~

            Agent blinked the sleep from her eyes.  The night had gone on too long, and had been filled with strange dreams.  Times, locations, and people she wasn’t yet able to place.  She stretched, wincing at how sore her muscles felt.

            This was the same room she’d fallen asleep in before: a small private bunk on a battlecruiser. The cot she’d been given was a bit harder than she remembered it being the previous day, and she groaned at how sore it had made her back.  After a bit of coaxing, Agent managed to lift her body out of bed. She found a small mirror hanging off the wall near the door and approached it.

            Her skin was pale, and dark circles sagged under her eyes. Wrinkles had shown up prematurely here and there, and she was surprised by their prominence.  Were they even premature?  Agent couldn’t remember how old she was any more. How many years had gone by without her realizing?

            Agent’s hair was long, straight, and disheveled.  She found it strange to see it outside of a ponytail.  Agent was about to rummage around in the room looking for a something to tie it back with before she spied a small, familiar-looking rubber band around her left wrist.  At some point in the night she must’ve pulled her hair loose of her own accord without remembering it.  After brushing a few of the tangles away with her fingers, she pulled her dark brown locks into a tight ponytail.

            Alright, she supposed she didn’t look too awful now.  She was dressed in a white t-shirt and a pair of cargo pants, but the clothes were clearly not her own and hung loosely on her frame.  They were better than nothing, she supposed.  She wondered for a moment what had been done with her ghost uniform.  Granted, in the end she was glad she hadn’t been left in it overnight.  The armor was great for the battlefield but awful to sleep in.  Its protective plating was far from comfortable, and its tight muscle fiber felt constricting after long periods.

            Maybe she wouldn’t need the ghost suit any more.  Tosh might fit her with a black suit like his own, unless such things were only granted to high-ranking officers in his organization.  Was it even an organization?  Was it just the two of them?  No, Tosh said he’d captured other ghosts on Tarsonis.  That meant there were more.

            At last, it was time to try the door.  It opened with a pneumatic hiss as she approached, and Agent stepped out into a wide hallway.  A few crewmembers were wandering about, most looking like they either just stepped out of bed or were heading back to one.  She followed a young man who was thinking incessantly about the coffee in the mess hall, to the point where Agent could almost taste it on her lips.  She winced.  He might’ve liked it, but it sounded far too bitter for her tastes.  Still, where there was coffee there would be food.  It felt like she hadn’t put anything in her stomach in days.  Thinking on it for a moment, she figured she probably hadn’t.

            The hallway eventually opened up into a large cafeteria.  The room was almost empty of people despite its size.  Agent probed around a little, gathering telepathic information from around the ship.  Very few people seemed to be aboard, and she wondered if this battlecruiser was even functioning with minimum staff.

            Agent’s headache was slowly returning, and it became clear that she’d overdone it with her telepathic powers.  She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to pull back and focus on just the room around her.  Most of the crew in the mess hall looked like a surly bunch.  They didn’t have the air of military personnel at all.  This _was_ a military ship, right?

            Eventually she spied a group of people towards the back of the hall.  There were maybe six of them all bunched together at a table, but they were all dressed in the same black ghost suits that Tosh had worn.  She approached, and they eyed her suspiciously.  Oddly enough, they all seemed to be hiding their thoughts the same way Tosh had been the other day.

            “Greetings,” she said, saluting them and trying to sound nonchalant.  “I’m ghost agent X75301N.  Tosh informed me that I will be joining this special operatives unit once I recover from my treatments.”

            “You don’t gotta join,” said one of them, a young man with tanned skin.  “Tosh is our founder, and he hands out the terrazine, but he doesn’t own us and he doesn’t own you.”

            “Go on back to your room, little ghost,” said another, a female wearing a visor that obscured her face.  She had a thin, drawling accent, probably from a fringe planet.  “You ain’t one of us, yet.”

            “Terrazine?” Agent asked, ignoring the woman.

            The group glanced nervously at each other, and Agent caught the edges of a hushed, telepathic conversation between them.  The first man rolled his eyes, and turned to Agent again.

            “The stuff Tosh gave you to help you remember,” he said, ignoring the mental murmuring of his compatriots.

 _Damn, she really did just fall off the turnip train,_ thought the woman with the visor.  Agent narrowed her eyes, and took a step back from the table.

            “I’m going to get something to eat.  We might be working together, so I’ll see you around,” she said, waving to the table before walking away.

            No one else in the hall looked familiar.  She glanced around for Tosh, but wasn’t able to locate him.  He was probably welcoming another new recruit, maybe helping them get adjusted.  She wondered if he was as rough with the others as he had been with her.

            She was still drawing a blank as to who exactly had brought her here.  These weren’t Dominion soldiers or ghosts.  They were all just a little too unprofessional.  Still, the mess hall was familiar.

 _“They call this ship the_ Aphrodite _for a reason, Agent,” Commander Gellard said, putting a hand on X75301N’s shoulder.  “One of the finest battlecruisers in the whole Confederate fleet.  Ain’t she a beauty?”_

_“Even the cafeteria is nice,” she said, taking in the largeness of the place.  She could feel Commander Gellard’s eyes on her, but thought nothing of it.  It was against regulation to actively read the mind of a superior officer, but sometimes she found herself overhearing a few of his errant thoughts.  Still, she had no reason to fear him.  He was her superior officer, and he was just being friendly._

_“First time you’ve ever been on one of these babies, huh?” he asked._

_“Yes, sir,” she grinned.  “This is my first mission as a fully trained ghost agent.”_

_“I have a feeling you’re gonna love it here.”_

            Agent was thrust back into the present, and the room spun.  She put her hand on the nearest empty chair, and the space shifted outward.  She cocked her head to the side, realizing that this mess hall was a larger version of the one she remembered from the battlecruiser _Aphrodite_.  Had Dominion ships gotten larger?  No… they mostly upgraded and repurposed old ships from the Confederacy.  She turned to a man who looked like he was probably on the maintenance crew, who had been eyeing her for the past few minutes.

            “I’m sorry, I’m new here.  What’s the name of this ship, again?” she asked.  The man fumbled for a few moments, confused either by the question or by her forwardness.  His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish before it felt like he understood what she wanted.

            “The _Hyperion,_ miss,” he finally replied.  “It’s kind of a hard thing to forget.  Are you feeling alright?”

            She nodded, feeling just a little sick.

            The _Hyperion_ was Emperor Mengsk’s flagship.  At least it had been, before it was stolen by a group of pirates and terrorists known as Raynor’s Raiders.  They must have been after the train she was guarding on Tarsonis, and had taken her and some of the other ghosts along with it as a prize.  God only knew what they were going to do with her.

            Agent stumbled back to her room, stomach twisted so deeply into a knot that she would never get food into it now.


End file.
